“Whatever, Eric. Maybe it’s time you went back to your own van.”
“Matt has been drugging you,” said Eric. “And then he—”
“I mean it, Eric. Please leave.”
Eric did, hanging his head. Lark didn’t know what to make of what he’d just said. Maybe she shouldn’t have been so mean to him. Shouldn’t have sent him off like that. But he’d been out of line. Really out of line, and... Or maybe it was because he’d said that stuff about Matt. “Matt’s been drugging you.” That wasn’t true. Sure, Matt gave her drugs, but that was just because he wanted her to have a good time. He wasn’t drugging her. Not in the strictest sense. Besides, she needed Matt.
There was movement in front of her, and Lark jerked her head up from her dresses. Death Man slapped both of his hands down on her table and leaned forward.
Lark shrieked.
“Go home, pretty girl,” said Death Man. “If you stay here, you will die.”
He captured her eyes with his own, and Lark stared into them, expecting to be caught in the gaze of a lunatic. A blank, crazy gaze. But instead, Death Man’s eyes were concerned. Tender. And...familiar.
Lark’s eyes narrowed. “I know you,” she said. “I’ve seen you—”
“Go home,” said Death Man, looking down. He pushed away from her table and hurried away. He nearly ran.
Lark stared after him. Those eyes. Who was he?
* * *
Tina Morris watched her boyfriend Eric slink back towards their camper. He’d been with that Lark chick. Tina wasn’t stupid. She knew that Eric wasn’t always entirely faithful. And she usually let it go. It was the X. That’s when it happened, anyway. Ecstasy made people do things they wouldn’t do if they hadn’t taken it, and she could understand.
Tina didn’t take ecstasy anymore. When she came down from it, she got really freaked out. She always felt as if she was being locked in a dark cave, and that she had no hope of ever getting out of it. She liked it a lot up until that part, but then she couldn’t handle it. So she had to stop.
Eric wasn’t on ecstasy right now. He was just giving their cocoa—their livelihood—to that chick. Lark was prettier than Tina was. Lark had long black ringlets. Big blue eyes. And really big tits. Tina had tiny tits. Mosquito bites. Eric said he liked her just the way she was, but he was a liar. Because if he liked her so much, then he wouldn’t have to sleep with those other girls. Those other girls, with bigger tits. Of course, it wasn’t hard to have bigger tits than Tina. Everyone did. Tina had huge hips too. A wide ass. But a flat ass. No wonder Eric looked elsewhere.
Eric was close to the camper now. Tina didn’t want him to know that she’d been watching him. That she’d been waiting for him. She turned away from the window and began stacking Styrofoam cups. Putting them in boxes. Stacking the boxes. Somebody had to work around here. Eric could go off and flirt, but Tina had to make sure that something got freaking done.
She heard the door open but didn’t look up. She wasn’t going to talk to him about it, she decided. She was just going to pretend none of it had happened. It didn’t matter anyway. Things weren’t going to change. Even if she did try to talk to him about it. Hell, maybe she didn’t really want them to change. It wasn’t as if she could go home or anything. She’d ended up on this tour because her mother had kicked her out. She had nowhere else to go. No one to be with except Eric.
“Hey doll,” said Eric. “What’s going on?”
“Just packing stuff up,” said Tina. She hoped her voice didn’t waver too much. It sounded half-strangled in her head.
“You like Lark, right?”
Tina dropped the Styrofoam. Turned. Stared at him. “What?”
“Well, you know what that Matt guy was doing to her, right? So, I was gonna ask her if she wanted to ride with us. You wouldn’t mind that, would—”
Tina cut him off with a choked cry. She picked up several stacks of Styrofoam cups and hurled them at him.
“Tina?”
Tina took a few seconds to try to monitor her breathing, to calm down. But it wasn’t any use. She couldn’t calm down. She wanted to hurt Eric. She leapt onto him, began beating his chest with tight fists. He grabbed her wrists, held her at arm’s length.
“What’s wrong?”
By now, she was crying. Sobbing. Tears gushing onto her cheeks. The emotion had taken hold of her, and she felt as if she no longer controlled her own body. She went to the door, managing to get a few words out, “I need some air.”
She threw the door open, barely hearing Eric call after her that it was too cold outside.
Tina didn’t care. Once out of the camper, she took off running. Blinded by tears, she barely avoided colliding with the vans and cars in the parking lot. But she did collide with a person. Someone wearing black. Someone tall.
She backed away from him, murmuring, “Sorry. I didn’t see you. I’m sorry.”
It was Death Man. She knew him. The guy who followed the tour around telling everyone to go home.
“It’s okay,” said Death Man. His voice sounded different than usual. Maybe it was because he wasn’t screaming scripture. He sounded less official or something. “Are you lost?”
She shook her head.
“Get back to your car,” he said. “It’s dangerous out at night. You could get hurt.”
Tina was finding that she liked the screaming official Death Man better. His normal voice was creepy. The lack of doom and gloom in his tone made it all the more ominous. “Leave me alone,” she said to him. “Leave me alone.”
She took off again, heading towards a strip of trees on the edge of the parking lot.
“Don’t go in the woods,” called Death Man. “It’s in the woods. It’ll get you.”
Tina ran faster. Her figure grew smaller and smaller, nearly disappearing into the darkness.
Death Man swallowed hard. He looked around the empty parking lot. And then he followed her.
Chapter Four
The phone was ringing on the other end. Whitney paced in her small office, clutching it, silently willing someone to pick up. It had taken her some time to get this phone number, and if no one ever picked up, then the number would just end up being one more dead end. She wasn’t entirely sure why she was pursuing this anyway. She wasn’t a reporter. She didn’t investigate crimes. She was a rock journalist for Christ’s sake. All this digging was completely new to her.
That was why it had taken her a while to get the phone number. When she’d first seen the headline, she hadn’t even had an inkling of an idea to call anybody. She just thought, “Hey! There’s proof Shane’s telling the truth!” Idly that morning, she’d googled The Wrenching. She’d been bored. But a news story had popped up. The headline read, “Freak Disappearances on Rock Tour.” And the story told of a girl, Tina Morris, a member of the Entourage, who was the fourth fan of The Wrenching to disappear from the tour in the past three months.
Whitney thought that was kind of weird, because of the mention of other fans disappearing. Shane had said that there had been other disappearances, but Whitney had been unable to corroborate his story. She hadn’t found any news articles. She’d assumed it was because the disappearances didn’t really warrant any real news. After all, what were one or two itinerant fans in the grand scheme of things? And didn’t those kids just slip off all the time on their own?
But this article was real, hard evidence. Whitney saved it to her favorites, jotted down some information from it, and made notes on the girl’s name and where she’d lived.
They’d found one of her shoes in a strip of trees near the parking lot of the venue of the last concert she’d been to, but nothing else belonging to her. Creepy stuff.
She puttered about for the rest of the morning, working on a draft of an article on some up-and-comers in the punk scene. But it was useless trying to distract herself. She knew what she wanted to do. She wanted to rewrite the Shane Adams article with this new bit of information in it. Maybe then it would sell. It
would change the whole angle. Instead of a crazy rock star, Shane would appear concerned about his fans. It would be an appeal for justice, for an investigation. Whitney liked it. She liked it a lot. She was excited.
She pulled up her favorites list and clicked on the article. Immediately her screen turned white. “Page cannot be displayed,” it said. Whitney tried refreshing. No good. She tried typing in the address. Nothing. She tried searching for it in Google with the same criteria as earlier that morning. It wasn’t there! She tried a couple other search engines. Yahoo. MSN. It wasn’t listed anywhere. She tried searching for the words in the headline. That didn’t work either. The page had disappeared.
Whitney couldn’t believe this. If it weren’t for the fact she’d saved it to her favorites list, she would think she’d imagined the whole thing. If the site was still on the Google search results or any search results, she would just assume that it was experiencing technical difficulties. But it was as if the article had been removed. No, it wasn’t “as if.” The article had been removed. Someone somewhere didn’t want people to know that kids were disappearing from The Wrenching tour.
Maybe that was why she hadn’t been able to find any information on any of the other disappearances to back up Shane’s story. Maybe there had been news articles, but they’d been pulled.
But that was silly. It was one thing to pull something off the internet, but once it was published in a newspaper, it couldn’t be pulled. It was on paper. She should search newspapers. She started to type into her search screen and then stopped. She’d already checked the internet. There was no information. If she were going to search through newspapers, she would have to do it some other way. But how? Whitney had been using the internet for research since she was seventeen. She couldn’t remember how she’d done it before then.
Then it came to her. Microfiche. That was how people searched newspapers without the internet. At the library. She was actually going to have to go somewhere. She realized that she took technology for granted.
Hours later, she stumbled back into her apartment, having discovered nothing in any of the newspapers. Searching through them was tedious at best. She had to look through every single page and see if there was any information on it. She couldn’t find any. But that didn’t really mean that there wasn’t any information on the page. What it meant was that Whitney hadn’t seen it. Her eyes had gone bleary at the end, and she’d had a hard time focusing. She was frustrated. She was tired. But she was more determined than ever to rewrite the Shane Adams article. And to publish it. And to expose this cover-up.
Luckily she’d made those few notes on the article, like the name of the girl who’d disappeared. She was able to do a search on the girl. Found an old newspaper article on her from high school that listed her mother’s name. It was a good thing too, because her mother didn’t have the same last name as Tina. Probably a second marriage or something. She’d looked up Tina’s mother on whitepages.com. And now, Whitney was waiting for someone to pick up the goddamned phone.
Finally, an answering machine picked up. Whitney had reached Marguerite Rinehart, who was currently unavailable. But if Whitney left her name and number, Marguerite would get back to her. Whitney didn’t leave a message. She just hung up.
Whitney stared at her phone, nestled in the palm of her hand. Now what?
* * *
“Matt is a god in bed!” exclaimed Karen Howell, throwing her leg up over the back of the seat in the van where she was sprawled, smoking a cigarette.
Lark exchanged a look with her best friend Rainey. They were sitting behind Karen, who’d just thrown herself inside the van a few minutes ago. Lark had assumed Karen was post-coital. Karen’s hair was mussed, and her shirt was on backwards. But her exclamation proved it.
Karen was one of the other girls that traveled in the van with Lark and Rainey. There were four girls: Lark, Rainey, Karen, and Deb. Two guys: Matt and Damien. Damien and Rainey were a couple, so Rainey didn’t sleep with Matt, but pretty much all three of the other girls had or did.
“God is not exactly how I’d put it,” said Lark. “Can I bum a smoke?”
“I bummed this one from Matt,” said Karen.
Rainey offered Lark her pack of cigarettes. “I wouldn’t know about Matt,” Rainey said.
Lark took a cigarette from Rainey and handed the pack back. “Trust me,” said Lark, lighting the cigarette. “Not a god. Not even close.”
“Oh, whatever,” said Karen. “Lark’s frigid. That’s what Matt says anyway.”
“He does not,” said Lark. Everyone was trying to poison her against Matt. She didn’t get it. Maybe Karen was just jealous. Or worried that Lark wanted to keep Matt for herself. “Look, Karen, I’m not trying to keep Matt from you, you know? If you want him, he’s all yours. But I doubt he’ll want you and you only.”
Karen wrinkled up her nose. “What are you talking about? You couldn’t keep Matt from me if you wanted to. He doesn’t even want you.”
Lark sighed, exasperated. “Next you’ll be telling me that Matt’s drugging me.”
“You know about that?” Karen’s eyes got wide. “Who told you that?”
Eric had. And now Tina was missing. Just like the other guy and girl a few months ago. Now wasn’t the time to be pointing fingers at each other. Now was the time to be helping each other, getting each other’s back. “Matt is not drugging me,” she said.
“Actually...” said Rainey.
* * *
Matt was drugging her.
What was worse, he was molesting her while she was passed out. Orally.
Because...
Lark didn’t give blow jobs. And apparently Matt was pissed about that.
What was even worse was that he was telling people about this as if it were a big joke. As if Lark had it coming. As if she deserved it for holding out or something.
Maybe she hadn’t made herself clear when she told him why she didn’t give blow jobs before. She thought she had, but it wasn’t an experience she particularly liked to talk about, so maybe she’d been a little vague. So she was going to remedy that lack of clarity. She was going to make sure Matt understood.
She was angry. She was disgusted. And she felt really stupid, because she’d thought Matt was different.
She found him beside Tavis Green’s van, smoking a bowl with about five guys. She didn’t greet him. She just started talking. “His name was Jimmy. I think I told you that. I’m pretty sure I did. Didn’t I? Didn’t I tell you that, Matt?”
Matt had seen her coming but wasn’t prepared for her tone (angry, barely controlled) or her volume (very, very loud). He laughed. “What’s up, Lark?”
“Didn’t I tell you his name?”
“What are you—”
“Never mind,” she interrupted. “I know I told you his name. I know I did, because I remember how you promised me that you were different than he was. I remember that you said I was safe now. You would keep me safe. I remember that. You must not.”
Matt wasn’t laughing anymore. “Hey, you want to go talk somewhere just you and me?”
“No. I want to talk right here. Just me. I told you about Jimmy. I know I did. I told you that he almost killed me several times. I told you that he beat me with a baseball bat. I told you that he pushed me down a flight of stairs once. But I guess I glossed over the other times. I guess I did, because otherwise you wouldn’t act as if it was a huge pain for me to not give you blow jobs. You would understand why I wouldn’t want to do it.
“Have you ever passed out because you couldn’t breathe, Matt? Did you know that if someone shoves his penis down your throat far enough, it actually cuts off your ability to breathe? Did you know that, Matt? Jimmy knew that. Jimmy made me pass out that way three times. He held me down and he—well, I guess you can probably figure out what he did, because you like to do it yourself. You just like to use pills instead of brute force.
“At least Jimmy had the balls not to hide what he was doing from me. I kn
ew who he was. I thought I knew who you were. I was really, really wrong, wasn’t I?”
Lark didn’t wait for an answer. She turned and stalked off. Matt called after her, but she didn’t answer. She could barely hear a few of the guys in the background. “Matt, that was fucked of you, man.”
Good. She wanted the other guys to think he was a jerk. She was glad of that. Matt was a jerk. But she couldn’t really think right now. Because she’d just been talking about Jimmy, and she didn’t want to think about Jimmy. The only thing to do was to shut down her thoughts. Turn them off like the ignition on a car. Keep it blank. Blank in her head.
Lark did this by looking around her and simply naming each object she saw. She didn’t react to the object. She didn’t attach memory or meaning to it. She just thought its name. That was enough to keep her brain busy. Enough to keep unwanted thoughts from intruding. She walked. She thought, “Trailer. Tree. Fire pit. Car.” And so on. Until she got back to the van. Matt’s van. And one thought ripped through: she couldn’t stay in this van anymore. She was homeless.
Fuck. What had she done?
It was this thought, then, and not anything else, that made Lark start to cry.
* * *
Shane wanted to cancel the concert because of the girl that had gone missing, but no one else had heard about the missing girl. He checked the websites where he’d seen the articles, and they were all gone. Shane wasn’t surprised. He should have figured that a little thing like the news wasn’t going to get in the way of this kind of destruction.
No, the only thing he could do to stop it was to quit playing. And God help him, he didn’t think he could.
Shane was in his tour bus. He’d got his own bus this tour. The other guys in the band had apparently insisted it. Shane was moody. Shane was too wild. And they didn’t like Shane’s rats. He’d let them loose in the bus, so they were crawling around on the floor. He liked his rats. His rats didn’t care whether or not he played music. They didn’t care whether or not he did too many drugs. They just loved him. Unconditionally. He scooped one up and stroked it. Rats were very smart. They made excellent pets, unlike gerbils or hamsters or mice, who were likely to bite and were obscenely stupid. At least in Shane’s opinion.
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